Jewels and Champagne #RavenRamblings @RavenMcAllan

Raven here, folks. When I was asked to be a Dirty Birdie, I was overjoyed. Not only to be asked, but because I was thought good enough to be one of them.

To find out that people ‘like’ what I do, well it just blows me away. Even after almost five years and if you count the stories now out of print, over 100 acceptances, it still makes me go a bit choked and definitely all over happy.

I get like that with every acceptance and release day. (I should have bought shares in a tissue manufacturer) Hubby is used to handing over the fizz. (Should have bought shares in Tattinger as well 🙂 )

My next ‘fizz and damp eyelash day’ is next week. Cue a happy dance and as I’m sitting down, chair swivel jiggle

That’s the day Kera Faire’s third book comes out (blimey that’s gone fast)

The Jeweller, is the second book in the Dark Isle Series, and it’s out form Evernight on 29th. To say I’m excited is an understatement. I have loved writing my alter ego Kera’s series. She’s my darker side, and sometimes it is so good to give her a free rein.

Dark Isle is an island set in the middle of a Scottish Loch with big keep out signs all over it. That’s because what happens there, is looks around furtively secret.

Eilean Bàs (Death Isle)

Killers don’t fall in love…

Kirsten thought her life was over when she met Mac, ‘the Jeweller’, a government sanctioned dispatcher.

Instead it was just beginning.

Admittedly, being kidnapped, tied up, and tortured with sexual pleasure might not have been the best beginning for a relationship, but their instant connection cannot be denied.

There is only the not so small matter of Mac’s job to consider.

He cannot possibly condemn Kirsten to a life lived in the shadows, because there would never be a chance off escape.

The choice is hers to make.

And a wee tease…

~~~With his fluorescent green wellie-clad legs ankle deep in muck and his pink rubber gloved hands and arms searching through said muck, Iain MacMillan was not a happy bunny.

Or a happy ex-dentist, erstwhile alternative jeweler, or killer.

Scrub that, he thought as one unguent turd stuck to his boots, a thoroughly pissed off dispatcher of filth. Not that he seemed to be dispatching much of it at that moment.

Oh it wasn’t the bright doll-pink gloves—he didn’t give a monkeys what color they were as long as they did their job. It wasn’t even the fact he was knackered, needed a shag, as if it was the water of life or failing that, a double tot of single malt.

No, it was the incompetence of others that did it and that was why he was where he was.

“This is shit. Fucking shit,” Mac grumbled. “If people did their jobs properly I could have worked this another way, and not be rummaging around in this bloody pigsty.”

“Ain’t that true.” Darke, his immediate boss, mentor, and friend nodded and popped a piece of gum in his mouth. “Pig shit and you’re up to your ankles in it. Grow a pair and get the bloody job done.”

Mac said something very uncomplimentary under his breath, looked up, and stared. “Since when have you chewed gum?”

Darke shrugged and blew a credible bubble from whatever it was he chomped on. “Since Astrid persuaded me to stop smoking.” He looked at his watch. “Three days four hours and ten or so minutes ago. She intimated it was restricting my stamina.” He picked out the gum from his mouth and flicked it way. “And I hate the bloody stuff.”

Come to think of it, Mac hadn’t seen a Gitane in Darke’s hands for a day or so. He burst out laughing and almost fell in the shit he was standing in. “Ooh under the thumb are we?”

Darke grinned, not at all abashed. “As if. She doesn’t nag or even ask. She just looks at me in a certain way.”

“And casts aspersions on your stamina.” That cheered Mac up a bit.

Darke shrugged. “I showed her how wrong she was.”

“But you still ditched the cigs?”

“Ah well, it was the old cinema ad about snogging a bloke who smelled and tasted like an ashtray that did it. To say nothing of the cigarettes and cancer crap she left all over the place. Gave me the heebie jeebies, I tell you.”

Bastard. Mac would settle for either or at that moment. Something glinted in the muck by his feet and Mac fished it out triumphantly. “Got you, you bugger. That’s the lot.”

“Congratulations. Go forth and jewel or whatever you call it.”

“Yeah, yeah, you go forth and fuck yourself.”

“No need. I have a woman to do it for me.” Darke grinned in the saturnine way he had, saluted, and turned on his heels.

“I hope some wax drops on your balls, you bugger,” Mac called after him as he climbed out of the sty and let the pigs back in. They might just have been fed but the bloody things were never full and he had no intention of being their next meal.

Darke turned, a shadowy outline with the sun behind his back. “Nope—it’s my turn to be boss tonight.”

Like he’d thought, Mac mused as he picked up the bag full of teeth and made his way back to the house, loved up and fucking lucky. He meanwhile was going to have to get friendly with his hand if he wanted to see any action.~~~